


Crash Down

by covetsubjugation



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Bad Decisions, Bad Pick-Up Lines, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 03:08:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11774238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/covetsubjugation/pseuds/covetsubjugation
Summary: It happened in slow motion, his phone cutting through the air, straight into the path of another man, dressed in the nicest outfit Hercules had ever seen. And it just so happened that the man was lifting his cup of hot coffee up to his mouth.Hercules squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t watch.*There are a lot of things you can do after spilling coffee on someone. Hercules just ran.





	Crash Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Patrocool (all_the_homo)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_the_homo/gifts).



> for the prompt "i thought i could trust you"

Hercules stood in the middle of the crowd, face all-but-pressed into some stranger’s hair. Beneath his feet, the train rocked and creaked its way through miles and miles of underground train tracks.

He swayed with the train’s motion, watched as the lights in the cabin flickered. All around him, people spoke in a low murmur, smiles tugging at corners of mouths, heads bent over shorter companions, glowing phone screens casting blue sheens on faces. He could hear vague snatches of conversations above the sound of his music, meaningless words interrupting his songs.

God, he was late.

His watch weighed a little heavier on his wrist as he gnawed at his bottom lip. He resisted the urge to check it again. All he would see would be the minute hand ticking ever closer to the time he was actually meant to be at work.

He could text John, let him know he was going to be running a bit behind schedule. He doubted John would mind his tardiness. The man was scheduled to open the bookstore with him, and he lived in the flat above the shop. It wasn’t like John could be late running down a single flight of stairs.

With immense effort, he wriggled his hand into the pocket of his jacket. He had to bend his arm in a way that humans weren’t meant to bend, but he grunted in satisfaction as his fingers brushed against the cold screen.

A jerk and a little more contortion, and his phone was in his hand. He yanked it out, victorious, ready to text John, but his hand twitched with pain at the last moment and he watched wide-eyed as reflex sent his phone sailing across the train.

It happened in slow motion, his phone cutting through the air, straight into the path of another man, dressed in the nicest outfit Hercules had ever seen. And it just so happened that the man was lifting his cup of hot coffee up to his mouth.

Hercules squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t watch.

“Fuck!” came the cry and his stomach dropped.

He snuck a glance. Half the train was glaring at him. The other half was glaring at the coffee soaked man who had sworn in the presence of their darling children.

“Fuck,” Hercules muttered in return.

The coffee soaked man turned to look at him. If Hercules’ stomach had dropped before, it was now somewhere beneath the surface of the earth. The guy was hot. Drop dead gorgeous. And he was shooting such vicious daggers in Hercules’ direction that Hercules himself was surprised he wasn’t dead yet. The man started towards him.

There was only one thing to do.

Hercules bolted.

* * *

“What do you mean you left?”

“I mean,” groaned Hercules, from his face-down position on the floor. “I fled the scene. Bolted. Ran. Left so fast there was a Hercules-shaped cloud of smoke behind me.”

John tsked in disapproval. Hercules responded by further curling into a fetal position.

“It wasn’t like there was a better option,” he begged.

Another tsk and a magazine came flying at his head. He uncurled long enough to see the magazine had flopped open to an article entitled _How to Own Up to Your Mistakes_. Thanks, universe.

“Apologise?” came the redundant addition from John.

Hercules shrugged. It was too late now, it had been over two hours since he had fled the subway, one hour and fifty-five minutes since he started huddling on the floor. Every customer that had entered the store nearly stepped on him; his ankle still throbbed from one particularly heavy-footed and non-observant child.

“You would think you’d know what to do after the last few times,” his coworker commented.

“This has never happened before.”“Mhm,” John agreed, unconvinced. “How did we meet, Hercules?”

They had met when Hercules accidentally slammed a door onto John’s hand and cracked his new watch.

“That was different.”

“And how did you meet Aaron?”

By dropping a plate full of food onto Aaron’s very expensive shirt.

“I—”

“And Thomas?”

Vomiting onto his expensive shoes when drunk Hercules had met him at a party.

The guilty party grumbled into the carpet. He never had a good track record when it came to new people. Or expensive things for that matter. John snapped his fingers at him with an exasperated sigh.

“Up, Hercules,” his colleague commanded. “We don’t pay you to lie on the floor.”

“You could.”

“But we don’t. And you were already late today. So _up_.”

His spine cracked as he stood up, and Hercules let out a reluctant oomph as he straightened up. “You’re no fun,” he accused.

John shrugged as a reply, shoved a box full of books into his arms. He gestured at the back of the store, and Hercules knew that he was on shelving duty again. If he could have flipped John off, he would. Instead, he settled for glaring at John, who had turned away at this point, and trudged to where he was meant to be.

Shelving duty was the most boring part of working in the bookstore. Unfortunately, it was also the most common duty while working in said bookstore. They were always swamped with new deliveries; it was almost every other day that boxes of new books would appear at their door step. Hercules almost wondered how the store managed to pay for so many new books when they could barely sell any.

Opening the cupboard box revealed sci-fi books from authors Hercules had never heard of, all with such weirdly spelt names that he knew he would be stuck at the very back of the store for a very long time. He would be a skeleton before he could finish shelving.

Huffing dramatically, Hercules grabbed a stack of books and hoisted himself up the shaky ladder. Perching on top, and taking a moment to pray that he wouldn’t fall to an untimely death, he started shelving the books.

The whole thing took longer than he would have liked, considering the shelves were more than packed and he had to take a moment with each new book to consider in which order the alphabet came.

“Fuck you, John!” he shouted after the fiftieth time.

There was a moment before an “I love you too Hercules!” came echoing down the narrow bookshelves.

Slowly, slowly, the box emptied, and finally, Hercules could clamber down the ladder, triumphant.

“Can you tell Alex to stop buying books from weird authors—” he started as he made his way to the front counter with the empty box before he noticed who was at there with John.

The man from the train was there. Still in his coffee-stained shirt, the man drummed his fingers against the countertop as he discussed something with John. Hercules couldn’t hear over the sudden ringing in his ears. He had the urge to bolt, but there was nowhere to run. He was about to stuff himself in the box when the man turned and caught sight of him standing there.

“Oh,” the man said, surprised.

“Hi,” Hercules said, dying on the inside.

“We just got the book you wanted in,” John said unobservantly. “I believe Hercules was shelving it.”

“Was I?” the man in question said feebly.

“Yup,” continued John. “Please—” the man gestured towards Hercules— “Hercules will get the book for you if you just follow him.”

Hercules wished for the ground to swallow him whole. Gulping, he turned back towards the narrow bookshelves. He could hear the coffee-soaked man follow after him, expensive shoes tapping against the wooden floor.

“He was looking for Time of the Kraken,” John called after them. “Jay Williams.”

The couple made their way down the bookshelves in an awkward silence, Hercules sweating more than an ordinary man would. What do you say to a guy when you fled the scene after spilling coffee on him?

“You left your phone behind, by the way,” the stranger said.

That apparently.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hercules watched him pull his phone out of his pocket.

“Oh,” Hercules said. There was a small crack on the screen protector, in the corner, presumably from its crash landing, but that was a small thing considering the stained shirt he had caused. “Thank you?”

“You’re welcome,” was the reply and the two of them fell into silence again. Hercules mourned his cracked phone in silence.

Time of the Kraken was at the very top of the shelf, right in the middle, where he had shelved it earlier. Climbing up the rickety ladder while Mr Lafayette looked on in mild horror was exactly Hercules’ idea of a fun time, and each shaky step felt like God daring him to slip and fall onto the customer.

“You got it?” Mr Lafayette asked and Hercules nodded down to him from his unsteady perch.

As a child, Hercules had once claimed to be a bird. He told everyone he was going to grow up and learn to fly. He had also made the same claim whilst drunk, despite the fact he was already grown up at that part. But on that particular day, Hercules realised almost 20 years late that there was only one way he would ever come close to achieving his dream.

“Of course,” he answered the uncertain customer as the ladder gave way.

The ladder crashed noisily onto the floor, nearly smacking into the coffee-stained man, who thankfully jumped out of the way. But he had jumped into the path of one descending Hercules, a fact he realised a moment too late, judging by the expression of utter dread when he looked up.

Mr Lafayette, who was not prepared for the incoming weight, somehow managed to stay on his feet despite the sudden addition weight landing in his arms. He let out an _oof_ of surprise, whereas Hercules, who had smacked his elbow onto the shelf, groaned in pain.

“This was not what I expected from today,” the customer said after the shock had worn off.

“Same here,” Hercules said.

The two of them looked up at the book that remained on the top shelf. The edge of it just poked out over the edge, but it wasn’t enough to grab. Seeing as their one ladder could now be charged with attempted murder, Hercules didn’t feel like climbing back up to tempt his fate again. Mr Lafayette seemed to agree.

It took a moment for the both of them to realise Hercules was still being bridal carried in a complete stranger’s grasp. Ungracefully, the man clambered back onto his own two feet. Mr Lafayette scratched at his scalp with a newly freed arm in awkward discomfort.

Hercules kept his eyes on his own feet. He could still see the hem of the coffee stained shirt in his peripheral vision. “Is there any other book I could interest you in, Mr Lafayette?” he asked his shoes.

“Just Lafayette, please. I think we can drop the honorifics after that life-threatening incident.” There was a brief rustle of fabric as the man pulled his own phone out of his pocket.

Hercules looked up to stare at a spot over Lafayette’s shoulder, just so he wouldn’t think the man was oddly fixated on his own shoes or something. He could just about see Lafayette scrolling through an Amazon wishlist.

The silence dragged on for a beat too long.

“I thought I could trust you. To catch me, you know,” he blurted out. “Like you caught my phone.” He squeezed his eyes shut in embarrassment. What was he saying?

There was a brief pause from Lafayette as if the man had stopped his scrolling to eyeball Hercules. Hercules imagined that on the other side of his closed eyelids, Lafayette was taking a moment to compose himself so as to not punch him for his awkward line.

“Well, I wouldn’t mind having you in my arms again,” came the reply. Hercules nearly fell down again.

“A Gentleman in Moscow?” Lafayette continued after another brief pause.

Luckily for the both of them, the book was available on a lower shelf, one that did not need a rickety ladder to climb up on. Lafayette also didn’t have any other books he wanted to get, so Hercules walked him to the cashier to check out his one purchase.

“I can call you when we get a new ladder and your book down,” he offered. His elbow throbbed at the thought of climbing up a new ladder.

The line made Lafayette snort as he pocketed his new book. The motion drew Hercules’ eye to the coffee stained shirt as Lafayette’s arm stretched across his chest and he abruptly felt bad again. His guilt must have shown on his face, as Lafayette smiled at him when he gestured to the stain.

“It’s okay,” he assured Hercules. “You can make it up to me by buying me a new cup of coffee.”

“When?” Hercules said. He glanced at his phone—the crack, unfortunately, distorted the clock—he could afford to take a break right now.

“Does next Tuesday at 3 work for you?”

A little lightbulb went off above his head. The friendly smiles, the assurances everything was fine, the pick-up line“Are you asking me on a date?” Hercules asked.

A slip of paper appeared on the counter. He stared down blankly at the string of digits, and the underlined _call me!_ beneath it.

“You tell me,” Lafayette said smoothly.

* * *

“You broke John’s what?”

“I broke his watch.”

Lafayette shook his head, laughing. He leaned back in his chair and raised up a hand, ticking off items on his fingers. Hercules glared down at his cup of coffee.

“So you broke John’s watch, ruined Aaron’s shirt, wrecked Thomas’ shoes, soaked my shirt—”

“Please stop going through my failures,” Hercules begged. He had already retreated to his usual face down position, planting his face against the table.

There was a brush of fingers against his cheeks. Prying his head off the table, Hercules went cross eyed watching Lafayette’s hand as the man stroked his face.

“It’s cute though,” his date said, smirking when Hercules blushed and hid his face again.

* * *

Lafayette only told him the reason he had asked him out several years after the train incident. It boiled down to Hercules being cute, even though he had wrecked a very expensive shirt and fled the scene instead of apologising.

Hercules thought being cute was a horrible excuse to let someone off the hook, and told Lafayette so.

The man had simply shrugged, and asked if Hercules would like him to withdraw his forgiveness.

Hercules had simply answered by clambering onto Lafayette’s lap and kissing him silent.

**Author's Note:**

> idek anything anymore
> 
> my tumblr is [splendornmisery](http://www.splendornmisery.tumblr.com) come scream at me


End file.
